University of Texas at Arlington

About: University of Texas at Arlington is a education organization based out in Arlington, Texas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 11758 authors who have published 28598 publications receiving 801626 citations. The organization is also known as: UT Arlington & University of Texas-Arlington.

Rapid microsatellite identification from illumina paired-end genomic sequencing in two birds and a snake

Abstract: Identification of microsatellites, or simple sequence repeats (SSRs), can be a time-consuming and costly investment requiring enrichment, cloning, and sequencing of candidate loci. Recently, however, high throughput sequencing (with or without prior enrichment for specific SSR loci) has been utilized to identify SSR loci. The direct “Seq-to-SSR” approach has an advantage over enrichment-based strategies in that it does not require a priori selection of particular motifs, or prior knowledge of genomic SSR content. It has been more expensive per SSR locus recovered, however, particularly for genomes with few SSR loci, such as bird genomes. The longer but relatively more expensive 454 reads have been preferred over less expensive Illumina reads. Here, we use Illumina paired-end sequence data to identify potentially amplifiable SSR loci (PALs) from a snake (the Burmese python, Python molurus bivittatus), and directly compare these results to those from 454 data. We also compare the python results to results from Illumina sequencing of two bird genomes (Gunnison Sage-grouse, Centrocercus minimus, and Clark's Nutcracker, Nucifraga columbiana), which have considerably fewer SSRs than the python. We show that direct Illumina Seq-to-SSR can identify and characterize thousands of potentially amplifiable SSR loci for as little as $10 per sample – a fraction of the cost of 454 sequencing. Given that Illumina Seq-to-SSR is effective, inexpensive, and reliable even for species such as birds that have few SSR loci, it seems that there are now few situations for which prior hybridization is justifiable.

Trocar-less instrumentation for laparoscopy: magnetic positioning of intra-abdominal camera and retractor.

Abstract: Laparoscopic surgery is an increasingly common method to treat surgical disease. However, hand-eye dissociation, a two-dimensional field-of-view, and fixed instrumentation with limited degrees of freedom contribute to a steep learning curve.1–3 Another significant limitation of laparoscopy is the fixed working envelope surrounding each port that is created by the fulcrum motion around the insertion point of each trocar. This often necessitates placement of multiple ports to accommodate changes in instrument position for improved visibility and efficiency. Additional ports contribute to postoperative pain, diminish cosmesis, and carry a risk of bleeding, hernia formation, or organ damage.4,5 Current robotic systems can overcome some of these hurdles, but they still require multiple trocars and are restricted by even smaller working envelopes.6 To provide greater flexibility of endoscopic viewing, instrument usage and to further reduce morbidity, we have developed in prototype a novel adjunct laparoscopic system concept, a moveable, “lockable” platform that is positioned intra-abdominally and stabilized by an external permanent magnet placed on the abdominal skin. Our hypothesis is that a transabdominal “magnetic anchoring and guidance system” (MAGS) can be used to actively control an intra-abdominal endoscope and multiple working instruments introduced through a single trocar into the abdominal cavity (Fig. 1). This platform would allow unrestricted intra-abdominal movement of surgical instruments and has the potential to realize the benefits of single-keyhole surgery while meeting or exceeding the performance of current-day fixed-trocar laparoscopy. We present the initial development of a MAGS camera and tissue retractor for laparoscopic surgery. FIGURE 1. A, Schematic representation of conventional transabdominal trocar and instrument (left) and proposed magnetically anchored and guided instrument/camera (right). B, Schematic representation of typical multitrocar laparoscopic surgery (left) and ...

Measurement of Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract: A measurement of the production processes of the recently discovered Higgs boson is performed in the two-photon final state using 4.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions data at root s = 7 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The number of observed Higgs boson decays to diphotons divided by the corresponding Standard Model prediction, called the signal strength, is found to be mu = 1.17 +/- 0.27 at the value of the Higgs boson mass measured by ATLAS, m(H) = 125.4 GeV. The analysis is optimized to measure the signal strengths for individual Higgs boson production processes at this value of m(H). They are found to be mu(ggF) = 1.32 +/- 0.38, mu(VBF) = 0.8 +/- 0.7, mu(WH) = 1.0 +/- 1.6, mu(ZH) = 0.1(-0.1)(+3.7), and mu t (t) over barH = 1.6(-1.8)(+2.7), for Higgs boson production through gluon fusion, vector-boson fusion, and in association with a W or Z boson or a top-quark pair, respectively. Compared with the previously published ATLAS analysis, the results reported here also benefit from a new energy calibration procedure for photons and the subsequent reduction of the systematic uncertainty on the diphoton mass resolution. No significant deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model are found.